VALE HAL DAVID

I confess, I was a bit of a poseur in high school and for some years beyond. I tended to the pretentious in many of my professed tastes, including in popular music. While my peers adored the Monkees and the Beatles, I was into Cole Porter. My mum had musical scores for Porter songs, but I stumbled on to him myself when I was looking for sheet music for a song which I though was called ‘Day and Night’ (actually it was ‘Goin’ out of my Head’, by Randazzo and Weinstein, but I thought THAT was written by Burt Bachrach and Hal David. Much confusion.)

Anyway, the person behind the counter at Allens said that there was no such song and sold me ‘Night and Day’ by Cole Porter. So I took it home (and my mother laughed when she saw what I had bought) and started tinkling on the piano (I was 90% self-taught after a disastrous start with a piano teacher at age 8. My mother, an accomplished singer, despaired of me but I had a good ear. Still, I wish I had listened to her and persisted with lessons. And PRACTISED. Listen to me, children! PRACTISE!!)) And I fell in love with Cole Porter, at the age of 13, in 1968. THEN I trawled my mother’s songbooks and fiddled with Begin the Beguine, Under my Skin, I Get a Kick out of You, all that stuff. Which led me to Frank Sinatra. But that was very uncool for a teen then, so I got into the Beatles and the Stones, which I still like.

But I was still thinking of Burt Bacharach’s music.  Even at that age I could see that his stuff was different; changing keys and rhythms, and there was this thing with Dionne Warwick, who sang like silk, and was just made for the Bacharach style. But behind the glamorous Burt and the honey-voiced Dionne was the lyricist, Hal David. You never saw him or heard him, but he was there behind the scenes with his poetry.

‘LA’s just a great big freeway, put a hundred down and buy a car. In a week, maybe two, they’ll make you a star…weeks turn into years as quick as that…and all the stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas…’

‘What do you get when you kiss a guy? You get enough germs to catch pneumonia. Then when you do, he won’t even phone ya! I’ll never fall in love again.’

‘I run for the bus, dear…while running I think of us, dear…’

‘Foolish pride, that’s all that I have left, so let me hide the tears and the sadness you gave me when you said goodbye…just walk on by…’’

He passed away last week at the age of 82, which doesn’t sound nearly as old as it used to. I just want to thank him for all the good songs he wrote with Bacharach. And I’ll even say a little prayer for him.